Declined!

[AndyS]

Evening all, some of you will remember I posted on the barclaycard article the other day that I had applied but not heard, today I got a letter saying “sorry we can’t accept your application”. 12 days after submitting it.

The letter is very vague, but does say if you want to know more write to an address is Leicester.

Is this actually worth doing? Why can’t they just tell you, or have an email form to request this information. Has anyone else been through this and is the response helpful, or just as vague as the original letter.

My experien score was 999. Will this refusal badly affect my credit score and cause issues going forward ?

[JDB]

Any response is unlikely to be very informative, but it is perhaps worth getting the additional information in case the decision is based on something untoward that you can address. Barclays has its own proprietary scoring algorithm based on its vast credit UK experience and unfortunately an Experian score of 999 means absolutely nothing. BC doesn’t like potential applicants who have big unsecured credit lines open and is a reluctant lender to the self employed. Beyond that there are random red flags (for them) in certain postcode areas or combinations of jobs/age/status. Like most credit providers, lending criteria have been significantly tightened.

[Ian]

They may also use TransUnion or Equifax which might show up issues.

However as stated above, 999 is no guarantee.

[0 post]

The reason they probably don’t tell you directly why you’ve been declined is related to money laundering regs. If you get declined due to money laundering flags/ concerns they need to be very careful about what they tell you to avoid ‘tipping off’ (letting you know about money laundering suspicions) which is a criminal offence with serious penalties. They would need a special team with special legal training to handle that to be careful about what they say. Even if that’s not why you were declined, far safer for them to let that special team handle the likely few follow up queries that people actually bother to make.

For the same reason even if you do query you’re very unlikely to get a satisfactory answer about why you were declined. From a legal standpoint it’s a lot safer for them not to explain their reasoning.